Cryptocurrency Mining Shifting Away from Energy-Intensive Proof of Work

[Goodcat49]

As the popularity of Bitcoin grows, the sustainability of traditional Bitcoin mining is questioned due to its exorbitant energy consumption.

The Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index Chart ( https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption) reflects exactly how much Bitcoin’s current approximate annual electricity consumption is and that it’s rising at an unprecedented rate.

Read the details in the article of Coinidol dot com, the world blockchain news outlet: https://coinidol.com/mining-shifting-away-from-proof-of-work/

[Goodcat49]

Casper vs Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) Based on Proof of Stake.

Casper includes new features that the Byzantine fault-tolerant BFT protocol may not support. It’s actually a combination of Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), a hybrid that will hopefully solve the problematic issues that Proof of Work and Proof of Stake have when used alone.

The new features that Casper displays are; Accountability; Dynamic validators; Defenses; and Modular overlay.

Accountability
If a violator breaks a rule, the violation and validator will be identified. The advantage of “accountability” is that validators can be penalized, thereby solving the “nothing at stake” problem that plagues chain-based PoS currently. The penalty is the validator’s deposit will be forfeited. “This maximal penalty is the defense against violating the protocol. Because Proof of Stake security is based on the size of the penalty, which can be set to greatly exceed the gains from the mining reward, Proof of Stake provides strictly stronger security incentives than Proof of Work.” (Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.09437v2.pdf (Source: Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith, November 15, 2017)

Dynamic validators

A safe way of the validator set to change is introduced.

Defenses

Defenses are set up to protect against long-range revision attacks and where more than 1/3 of the validators drop offline.

Modular overlay

As an overlay, the design of Casper makes it easy to execute an upgrade to an existing Proof of Work chain.

Plausible Liveness

Despite previous events, for example, slashing, delayed blocks, censorship attacks etc. if 2/3 of the validators follow the protocol, then it’s possible to finalize a new checkpoint.

Read the details in the article of Coinidol dot com, the world blockchain news outlet: https://coinidol.com/future-of-bitcoin-mining-involve-unsustainable-energy/